› added 5 years ago

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TIL that while pencil cores have never been made of lead, lead poising from pencils was not uncommon. Until recently, paint on the outside of pencils contained high levels of lead that was ingested when people sucked or chewed on their pencils.

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DMZe TIL a translator for the European Commission in Brussels knows 32 languages including Greek, English, German, Italian, Russian, East African Swahili, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin and Bengali, plus some dead languages like Old Church Slavic.
pLVZ TIL that the phrase blood is thinker than water, a phrase that promotes family ties over friendships, originally meant the opposite. The full phrase is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Meaning blood shed in battle bonds soldiers more strongly than genetics.
yQg1e TIL that "dry lightning" and "heat lightning" are myths. They are actually just extremely distant thunderstorms.
OGyZ1 TIL about the British post office scandal. Between 1999 and 2015 over 900 subpostmasters where prosecuted for theft and false accounting, when really it was a problem with their accounting software.
ADgJd TIL Marlon Brando’s final film was a movie called “Big Bug Man”. The animated film, co-starring Brendan Fraser, still has not been released and likely never will be.